Astrophil and Stella 107

By Sir Philip Sidney 1554–1586 Philip Sidney

Stella, since thou so right a princess art

Of all the powers which life bestows on me,

There ere by them aught undertaken be

They first resort unto that sovereign part;

Sweet, for a while give respite to my heart,

Which pants as though it still should leap to thee,

And on my thoughts give thy lieutenancy

To this great cause, which needs both use and art,

And as a queen, who from her presence sends

Whom she employs, dismiss from thee my wit,

Till it have wrought what thy own will attends.

On servants’ shame oft master’s blame doth sit.

Oh let not fools in me thy works reprove,

And scorning say, “See what it is to love.”

Biography

The grandson of the Duke of Northumberland and heir presumptive to the earls of Leicester and Warwick, Sir Philip Sidney was not himself a nobleman. Today he is closely associated in the popular imagination with the court of Elizabeth I, though he spent relatively little time at the English court, and until his appointment as governor of Flushing in 1585 received little preferment from Elizabeth. Viewed in his own age as the . . .

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